25 years ago today, on 22 January, 1990, the Jewish Cultural Center was founded. One month earlier, on 13 December, 1989, the press agency ADN published an appeal in numerous East German newspapers. It announced a new coalition of Jews living in East Germany who were committed to spreading the knowledge of Jewish culture and history. The appeal was not an accident:

As early as 1986, secular Jews had found themselves gathering, at the invitation of the Jewish Congregation of (East) Berlin, to explore their Jewish roots – a heritage that no longer played any role in their parents’ identities. A group called “We for us – Jews for Jews” formed out of this second generation of political emigrants who had returned to Germany and grown up in the East. During their regular meetings, they got to know a vibrant Jewish culture, celebrated holidays, and held discussions and arguments – even about politics. Committees emerged, theater productions and lecture series were organized, and eventually the group – though regarded at times suspiciously by the Jewish Congregation – came to be firmly established as part of the community even as it was open to the broader public. The political upheavals in 1989 finally made it possible to implement the idea of an independent Jewish Cultural Center. The appeal prompted hundreds of responses from all over East Germany, including many non-Jews who were interested in becoming members or providing assistance. Since Jewish heritage was subsequently made a prerequisite of membership, these interested parties were named “Friends” of the Center.

While only 66 people participated in the founding assembly on 22 January, 1990, the first plenary session on 31 March saw an increase to 280, more than 200 of whom were already members. The board – initially called the Speakers Council – assumed leadership and in 1991 the Center applied to the official Register of Associations, receiving non-profit status a year later. In compliance with its charter, the Center spent the following years developing a wide variety of activities that served to impart greater understanding of Jewish culture and history: it supported research projects, offered older members attention and care, and taught the principles of religious life. This final endeavor generated controversy time and time again. Dr. Irene Runge, the founding member of the board, fought passionately on behalf of the Center’s religious function. She believed: “… It is not acceptable to run a Jewish Cultural Center from the perspective of non-Jews – to talk about Judaism instead of living it. If we, as Jews, want a Jewish Cultural Center, we can’t set out by turning our backs on the sources of Judaism. Rather, the Center must find its own way to commit to this tradition as a way of life.” From 1991 to 2006, it published a newsletter comprising, in its last incarnation, 8 pages and entitled the “Jewish Correspondence.” Once begun, the bulletin not only dealt with organizational questions but also explained basic elements of Jewish tradition. Some readers were surprised by the large number of religious topics, but the authors believed that an “engagement with the faith itself” was “part of historical self-awareness.” The editors saw the newsletter invariably as a means of asserting Jewish interests and frequently incorporated contentious articles on current affairs.

The Center’s greatest challenge could not have been foreseen at the time of its founding. It concerned the integration of a wave of Russian immigrants, who began arriving in Germany in the 1990s. A proposal at a round table in February 1990 to accommodate Soviet Jews in East Germany set the tone and, to a considerable degree, defined the life of the association until its dissolution. This included practical counseling, such as job creation schemes with designated positions for immigrants as well as lectures in Russian, and offered these newcomers the much-vaunted “home away from home” that they often didn’t find in Jewish Congregations.

On 16 December, 2009, the members meeting decided to dissolve the Jewish Cultural Center. The reasons included the aging membership and lack of youth involvement, but also the fact that neither Berlin’s government nor established Jewish institutions had ever given the Center support. For 20 years, the Center defined a Jewish city history and contemporary chronicle for Berlin in its own particular way: representing the left-wing position in internal Jewish dialogues, the campaign against racism, and cooperation between different cultures and religions. Thanks to the former head of the board, Dr. Irene Runge, the archive of the Jewish Cultural Center is now located at the Jewish Museum Berlin and available for research and study.

Ulrike Neuwirth, archive

Dr. Irene Runge talks about problems bringing kosher food to the Federal German Republic in the beginning of the Jewish Cultural Center.

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2015/01/the-jewish-cultural-center/feed/0“I didn’t want to ‘get lost:’ ” A conversation with Rabbi David Goldberghttp://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2015/01/i-didnt-want-to-get-lost/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2015/01/i-didnt-want-to-get-lost/#commentsWed, 07 Jan 2015 11:00:44 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=3024In the summer of 2012, there was an intense discussion in Germany about whether the circumcision of boys constitutes bodily harm under the law. Preceding this so-called ‘circumcision debate’ was a decision by Cologne’s district court that criminalized the ritual circumcision of boys. A high point in the debate occurred when a German doctor registered a legal complaint against Rabbi David Goldberg, of Hof, claiming that he was liable for “dangerous personal injury” due to the circumcisions he performed. I spoke with him about the complaint, and about his feelings as well as the reactions that he encountered during that period.

That’s easy to explain: I’m known in Germany as a circumciser and I’m easy to find through my website. Opponents of circumcision were looking for a sacrificial victim and they found it in me. Because the people who made the complaints against me…

… there were more than one?

Yes, there were a number of them. But the people behind them didn’t even know me. They were simply looking for a scapegoat.

How was it for you during that period?

I wasn’t afraid, but it was unpleasant for me. Most of all because of the stress: I received queries from journalists all over the world, from the USA and Israel. My telephone rang off the hook. I continued to do circumcisions the same as always. But then I also had to ease the worries of people who brought their sons to me, since many of them had been unsettled by the reports and a few even wanted to distance themselves from the circumcision. That uncertainty surrounding the practice is still perceptible today.

There were countless articles and stories about you at that time. What kind of reactions did you experience?

I received a lot of support from the Jewish side, of course, and interestingly from the Christian side as well. I got many nice, encouraging emails from clergymen and others. One even offered me financial assistance in case I was taken to court, but fortunately that wasn’t necessary because the Central Council of Jews in Germany took care of the legal aspects of the situation and ultimately the district attorney declined to press charges.

But I can imagine – in addition to the encouraging emails – that you received some of a very different nature…

Naturally! I got particularly bad emails from German atheists, if I may call them that. One wrote something to the effect of if I didn’t like the way it is in Germany, I should ‘get lost.’.

“Getting lost” – leaving Germany: The German title of our current exhibition (“Haut ab!”) refers to exactly that kind of reaction. Was there any point during the debate when you actually considered leaving the country?

No, I never thought about it.

You are originally Israeli. How long have you lived in Germany and why did you move here?

After the Wall came down, there was a wave of Jewish emigration out of the former Eastern block towards Germany. But there wasn’t any structure here for these new congregations: there were many places with no religious personnel, no rabbi, cantor, Kosher butcher, or mohel (circumciser). As a result, there were appeals at that time in Israel to people who could perform these tasks to come here – people like me. To be honest, I didn’t want to move to Germany! But I was persuaded to try it out for half a year. After six months I saw how important it was what I was doing here, so I stayed – at first, just for another year, and then another, and now I’ve lived here for 21 years. In the beginning I was in East Berlin, then in Straubing, and finally since 1997 in Hof, where there was previously no rabbi at all.

Do you still feel repercussions today from the legal complaints against you?

Sometimes older people speak to me about them or guests at a circumcision ceremony. But actually everything is fine now since the Bundestag’s decision clarified the legality of what I do: I am able to circumcise babies up to six months of age. For older babies or children, there needs to be a doctor present.

For a mohel in Israel, who’s performing two or three circumcisions a day, not really. But here, it is, particularly when you compare it with what German doctors do. In Germany, around ten percent of men are circumcised and most of those are because of medical problems that occurred after infancy. So doctors here don’t have much experience – especially in circumcising babies.

How do you see the 2012 debate, now in hindsight?

It seems to me that it was strongly driven by anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, there are still many anti-Semites here, so I think it’s a debate that could easily re-occur – only next time, hanging on another peg.

Did the discussion change anything for you?

I still perform circumcisions all over Germany and even all over Europe. So it didn’t change anything at all for me.

The interview was conducted by Alice Lanzke, media

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2015/01/i-didnt-want-to-get-lost/feed/0“One of these days I’m going to tell you everything”http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2015/01/graphic-novel-the-boxer-hertzko-haft-reinhard-kleist/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2015/01/graphic-novel-the-boxer-hertzko-haft-reinhard-kleist/#commentsFri, 02 Jan 2015 23:11:15 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=2962

Several of us at the Jewish Museum Berlin have observed that, over the last few years, the market for young adult literature has begun to demonstrate a growing interest in the subject of Nazism and the Holocaust. In the coming weeks, we will be introducing contemporary and classic works on this topic that we have read and discussed together.

What happened to the people who survived the concentration camps – what was life like afterwards? For their families, their children, the survivors themselves?

Alan Scott Haft’s father Hertzko Haft was a vicious and violent man, the polar opposite of what we would consider today to be a “good father.” Many years passed before Alan Scott Haft understood – and he didn’t really want to know – why his father was that way.

At some point he learned a little more:

“One of these days I’m going to tell you everything,” was the cryptic hint his father dropped during the only vacation the family ever went on together. It took another forty years for Hertzko Haft to actually tell his son everything: the story of his youth as the youngest of eight children in the Polish city of Belchatow, the German invasion, and the smuggling business his brothers got into to stay afloat.

Hertzko tells his son about his first girlfriend and fiancée, Leah. He describes the restrictions, the harassment, and the violent abuse that Jews were increasingly subjected to. Above all, he tells him about the period of time he spent in the concentration camp: he survived by boxing in brutal fights staged by the SS mostly between starving prisoners. When he learned after the liberation that Leah was living in America, he decided that he too should emigrate. He continued to box, and became famous. He wanted everyone to know that he had survived. Especially Leah.

Not to give away any more of the book, but we will just add that Hertzko Haft’s story is brutal and bloodcurdling. Alan Scott Haft wrote it down and published it in 2006 with the title “Harry Haft – Auschwitz Survivor, Challenger of Rocky Marciano.” The book came out in German in 2009 as “Eines Tages werde ich alles erzählen. Die Überlebensgeschichte des jüdischen Boxers Hertzko Haft.”

On the basis of Alan Scott Haft’s biography, Reinhard Kleist turned this unbelievable story into a graphic novel. His pictures – direct but nuanced – convey the violence, the brutality, and the despair.

The last pages of the book are dedicated to an essay by the sports journalist Martin Krauß, who writes about the boxers and fights in concentration camps and about Haft’s later life, with photos from his son’s personal collection.

“The Boxer” moved and impressed us in a way that few books on the subject of Nazis and the Holocaust have and we warmly recommend it to every willing reader over the age of 14.

PS: The jury of the German Young Adult Literature Prize was also taken with Reinhard Kleist’s graphic novel about Hertzko Haft and selected it as the best non-fiction book of 2013.

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2015/01/graphic-novel-the-boxer-hertzko-haft-reinhard-kleist/feed/0Jewish Life in Germany Today: Where Are the Young People? An Interview with Karen Körber.http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/12/jewish-life-in-germany-today-where-are-the-youngsters-an-interview-with-karen-korber/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/12/jewish-life-in-germany-today-where-are-the-youngsters-an-interview-with-karen-korber/#commentsWed, 10 Dec 2014 23:10:27 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=2912

The Jewish community in Germany has undergone a profound change in recent years—and the protagonists behind that change are the primary focus of research undertaken by Dr. Karen Körber, the first scholar of the Fellowship Program of the Jewish Museum Berlin. For the last two years Dr. Körber has been investigating “Daily Realities: Jewish Life in Germany Today” and she recently spoke to me about her findings.

Karen, the Fellowship Program of the JMB supports research into Jewish history and culture as well as into broader-ranging aspects of migration and diversity in Germany. You are the first person ever to complete the two-year Fellowship Program—a pioneer, so to speak—and I’d be interested to hear about that experience.

I found myself in a very open situation and was able to do much as I liked. All fellowship programs are fundamentally privileged set-ups but this particular one has the advantage of being attached to a well-endowed institution of international renown.

How did you come to research the topic “Daily Realities: Jewish Life in Germany Today”?

I had touched upon the topic already in earlier projects and was actually in the throes of research into migration from Eastern Europe for my doctoral thesis when the Museum offered me a Fellowship. So it was perfect timing: I was able to bundle all my research interests and develop a specific new project based on them.

If the theme is Jewish life in Germany today, why did choose to focus on migrants from the former Eastern bloc?

Because they are the majority, numerically, and because their influence on the life of Germany’s Jewish community overall is decisive today—and will continue to be so.

Since the collapse of the East bloc in 1989/90, Jews from the former Soviet Union (USSR) have been able to migrate to Germany. Before that, Jewish communities here were mostly very small and graying dramatically: some 30,000 members in former West Germany and no more than 300 or 400 registered members in former East Germany. Of course these numbers increased enormously—and very rapidly—on account of the new arrivals. The Jewish Council of Germany estimates that there are now over 100,000 Jews actively involved in their communities and another 100,000 who are not. The trend to religious pluralism has accordingly become more marked and the number of Jewish educational institutions has increased.

And how is the situation today?

The Jewish communities here—and other similiar religious communities—are now faced with a dilemma: young people are not getting involved and the current members are growing old. These are the factors that prompted my research. If the younger generation represents the actual and future promise that is currently lacking in such institutions, it becomes a matter of urgency to ask: Where are the young people today, and what are they up to?

How did you go about finding answers to these questions?

One component of my research program was an online survey carried out in late 2013 among a specific target group, namely individuals aged between 20 and 40 who had migrated to Germany with their parents. We asked them what it means to them to be Jewish, what they do, and how they live, etc. In addition, we carried out 30 in-depth interviews face to face.

What were the findings?

It is a fact that 35 percent of participants in the survey are no longer part of a community while the other 65 percent are made up of Liberal, Orthodox, Lauder and Chabad members. These findings confirmed the trend of pluralism and the growing lack of interest in established institutions. Regardless of whether or not they are part of a community, the majority of these young migrants see themselves as secular-liberal. Their self-image is shaped by their ethnic and cultural background but hardly at all by religion. They differ enormously in this respect from their parent’s generation. Their interest in Judaism is growing but it is typically a secular-liberal interest. Their sense of tradition and adherence to religious practice is accordingly weak and highly individual. The findings in this respect are very similar to those of the US-American PEW Study of 2013.

That’s right. I will make a brief presentation. The conference aims to bundle together the major strands of contemporary discourse and so my topic fits in well—for describing processes of individuation and diversification is an integral part of that discourse.

These processes are not found only within the Jewish community…

That’s right. They are a widespread phenomenon. But they bring up issues specific to the Jewish community and a pivotal aspect of the conference will therefore be the crucial question: How do people relate to this religion? The wave of immigration from the former USSR has turned the spotlight on the complex issues raised by this question both in Germany and in Israel. And ultimately, the question also has a political dimension. We have to consider how Jewish contemporary life may develop in a Europe wracked by on-going conflict: conflict within the community as well as conflict with other social groups. All these issues will be addressed at the conference.

Exactly. In publishing a compilation of papers by scholars of cultural studies and the social sciences on Germany’s Russian-speaking Jewish immigrant population, the journal will present interdisciplinary perspectives on how phenomena such as mobility, migration, the growing trend to pluralism in cultural practice, and the plural identities to which these give rise are shaping contemporary Jewish life in Germany.

Interview by Alice Lanzke, Media

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/12/jewish-life-in-germany-today-where-are-the-youngsters-an-interview-with-karen-korber/feed/0Generation “kosher light”— On the Lifestyle of Young Jews of Russian Descenthttp://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/09/generation-kosher-light/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/09/generation-kosher-light/#commentsSun, 07 Sep 2014 23:05:08 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=2403Tomorrow evening, 9 September 2014, the cultural anthropologist Alina Gromova will present her book “Generation ‘kosher light’” (transcript Verlag 2013) in the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin. As in the case of the many other authors whose “New German Stories” we recently discussed, we put three questions to Ms. Gromova prior to her reading:

Alina, for your study of an international group of young Jews in Berlin you took the city itself as your springboard. Exploring the locations where your subjects live, hang out, mingle and party enabled you to chart their diverse notions of identity, tradition and religion. Why did you opt for such an explicitly spatial focus?

Identity and tradition are terms often difficult to grasp, because they are interwoven with symbols, values, wishful thinking or memories. A space, however, has not only a symbolic but also a physical dimension and is therefore more palpable. Personally, I don’t see a space as a 3-D void waiting to be filled by people or things. On the contrary, people and things are what create a space in the first place. And urban space is especially fascinating, I find, because a broad cultural and religious spectrum often occupies one and the same spot, however tiny; and different elements simultaneously give rise there to their own spaces, so the result is a palimpsest of spaces that then interconnect.

Your book is based on ethnographic field research that you undertook for your PhD thesis: for one year you accompanied fifteen Jews of Russian descent in their daily routines and had them show you their favorite cafés, meeting places, synagogues and restaurants. They even opened up their private space, their own homes to you. To what extent did your own biographical background help you gain access to this field? How did you find the right persons for your research and win their confidence?

Before I began the fieldwork, I had hardly any contact with other Jews of Russian descent, except within my own family. I therefore had to create my “field” from scratch, so to speak as a “distanced insider.” I attended Jewish religious services, cultural events and parties and took up contact with groups of people who were talking in Russian. I share their cultural background and language, so it was easy for me to join in their conversations. We know the same jokes, like the same Eastern European dishes and watched the same movies when we were kids. I was therefore quickly integrated in the groups and so had an easier time of it later, finding guinea pigs for my research.

The title of your book is Generation “kosher light.” Can you explain in a few words what distinguishes this generation?

The term “kosher light” is a colloquialism for a liberal approach to the traditional Jewish dietary laws, the kashrut. For example, people today may well avoid using milk and meat in the same dish and yet still prepare dairy products and meat in the same pot, rather than having one pot for each, as Jewish tradition requires. I’ve used the term “kosher light” for this young generation of Russian-speaking Jews, because these women and men take a self-assured and creative approach to Jewish tradition and religion and adapt them to their urban, Berlin-specific lifestyle—with regard not only to food, but also to clothes, to the Jewish tradition of study or to the choice of a partner.

Anyone wishing to learn more about “Generation ‘koscher light’” or put questions to Alina Gromova is warmly invited to attend her reading on 9 September 2014 at 7.30 pm in the Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin. For advance registration, please call 030-25993 488 or send an email to: reservierung@jmberlin.de.

Julia Jürgens, Academy Programs “Migration and Diversity”

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/09/generation-kosher-light/feed/0“Kiddush Asylum”http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/08/kiddush-asylum/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/08/kiddush-asylum/#commentsWed, 13 Aug 2014 15:10:08 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=2316When I first heard that the Jewish congregation of Pinneberg is giving “church asylum” to a Muslim, I had to chuckle. The article about it in the online magazine Migazin put the words “church asylum” in quotation marks and used a picture of the dome of the synagogue on Berlin’s Oranienburger Straße – making the linking together of the three monotheistic religions appear intentional.
But now I heard from a friend that there’s a film about the Kiddush asylum at the Pinneberg congregation for a man from the Sudan, and I had to wonder why “church asylum” isn’t “synagogue asylum”.

The Kiddush is a blessing spoken over a goblet of wine at the beginning of a holy day, in order to sanctify the day. Church asylum, as I learned from the film, is actually about a sacred room that protects people who are under threat. The Jewish congregation in Pinneberg has one such room. And it is encouraging to hear – as the head of the congregation explains in the film – why they are using this space to protect a person, at least temporarily, from persecution.

In our series of events “New German Stories” we present different perspectives on the immigration country Germany. That immigrants from Turkey, Vietnam, Poland, India and Cameroon and their descendants have stories to tell is nothing new—the novel twist is, that they present them here as German stories. On Tuesday, 8 July, director Canan Turan will be a guest of the Academy of the Jewish Museum. In her film KIYMET, she tells the story of her grandmother, who migrated to Berlin from Turkey in the early 70s. We asked Canan three questions about her project:

How did the idea to make a film about your grandmother Kıymet come about?

My grandmother is a strong, impressive personality with a history that is not only very dramatic, but also empowering, both for women and people of color. I’d had the film concept in mind for several years. Inspiration came above all from my grandmother’s decision to leave my grandfather, for this step was proof of her great courage and it also encouraged me to take a more emancipated approach to relationships. So it was therefore only a matter of time—and of funding—until I actually shot the film. While studying at Goldsmiths College in London I obtained the necessary structural support and so was finally able to realize the project.

The film paints a very personal portrait. It turns the spotlight on the story of Kıymet and her family, and the violence and suffering she experienced in her marriage. The overall history of immigration from Turkey to Germany is told on the sidelines, so to speak. Why did you choose to approach her biography in this way?

The history of immigrants in Germany is the story of Kıymet or Ahmet, of Emine or Hüseyin, and of all the others who came here because they were no longer able or no longer wanted to live in their country of origin. To try to understand history without recourse to biographies and without appreciating the value of oral history is a very western/European approach, one that edits out people’s personal experience to the benefit of a “master narrative.” Moreover, I believe it is my responsibility as a filmmaker to talk about what I know best, about my own family, for instance. All other approaches harbor the risk of “othering,” of seeking to represent that which cannot be represented. In short: I know and admire my grandmother and I wanted to share her story, a story that simultaneously portrays the life of a remarkable woman and a slice of Germany’s migration history.

From the early 70s onwards, your grandmother fought for workers’ rights and campaigned against racism and discrimination in factories and schools in Germany. In which associations was she active?

My grandma Kıymet became an active member of the trade union IG Metall in 1974. She often talked to me about immigrant workers’ strong involvement there, about how they mobilized for protest marches, campaigns, and the like, and especially for Labor Day on 1 May. In the 80s she worked as a cleaning woman at the Urban Hospital in Berlin-Kreuzberg and was very popular there among her colleagues, the nurses, and the doctors. People knew about her past as a member of the Workers’ Party of Turkey and elected her several times to the works committee. After the death of her eldest son in 1989, my grandmother took early retirement. I am sure she would otherwise have remained politically active for many more years, because she is still a very vigorous woman with an unshakeable commitment to equality and justice. But in recent years she has become more withdrawn, living quietly in her native village community on the Thracian Mediterranean coast. Her hard life as a “guest worker” in Germany and the domestic violence she suffered, the two main reasons for her retreat, have taken their toll—and many other immigrants have suffered a similar fate.

On 15 February 1940, after a four-year wait for an American visa then a successful escape from Nazi Germany, the Engel family, hitherto of Munich, reached the safe shores of Manhattan. In the family’s luggage was memorabilia that the then 13-year-old Alfred Engel was to donate to the Jewish Museum Berlin, decades later, from his father’s estate. It includes rare photographs from the 1910s, a time when Harry Engel (1892–1950) was an active soccer player at FC Bayern Munich.

It was a seemingly nondescript sheet of notepaper that drew my attention to the bundle of objects comprising Harry Engel’s legacy when I was reviewing the content of our archives in preparation for the forthcoming exhibition “The First World War in Jewish Memory.” The note, handwritten in English, stated that Harry had been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp but that his First World War medal had helped him secure an early release. The note was thus a personal comment on the King Ludwig Cross, a Bavarian Order of Merit awarded as a “token of commemoration and recognition of those who during this war have performed with particular merit for the army or for the general welfare of the homeland through official and voluntary activities” and that Harry Engel took with him into exile.

Of course, to what extent the Order actually did help Harry Engel secure an early release from the concentration camp to which he had been admitted on 10 November 1938 can no longer be verified. The brief note does attest, however, that this is the story the family members associate with the war medal. It is hence an extraordinary document and, from our present perspective, as important as the Order itself.

Like a magnifying glass, it brings sharply into focus those perceptions of the First World War handed down within German-Jewish families. Memories of that war are closely interwoven with what happened between 1933 and 1945: the families’ sense of being an integral part of German society and their subsequent exclusion from it are irrevocably linked. It is a godsend for us, the museum, to have found succinct yet irrefutable evidence of these conflicting associations in the form of a handwritten note, a tangible object apt for display. They are commonly reflected in the personal histories recounted by friends of the Jewish Museum and then documented of course, but visual evidence of them is a rarity. (Tim Grady, author of The German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War in History and Memory, a book I can highly recommend, will present his research on 3 September 2014, here in the Museum.)

Moreover, not only the Order and the note, but also the football photos from the Engel collection are perfect gems. The FC Bayern Munich celebrates its centenary this year and its archive expressed great interest in the photos when I made enquiries there about Harry Engel. He is certainly no stranger to the archive but his fortunes later in life were largely unknown and—given that plans are afoot to document past players’ biographies—access to his material would be welcomed. According to player stats, Engel played in a total of 104 games in the years 1913–1919 and ranked permanently among the regular first team players from July 1915 onwards. Two of the photos in our collection can also be found in a commemorative brochure published on the 25th anniversary of FC Bayern in 1925—it too was in Harry Engel’s emigration luggage. His name is mentioned in it several times.

The name Engel cropped up again in December 1934, this time in FC Bayern’s guestbook. Then, finally, a brief obituary in the Association’s club newsletter of 29 November 1951 recalled the deceased as “a nice guy and a sportsman in the old tradition.” And it therefore suddenly struck me as most fitting that everyone is raving about football at the moment while we are busy with preparations for the soon to be opened cabinet exhibition about the First World War in Jewish memory.

Leonore Maier, Collections

PS: I sincerely thank the FC Bayern Archive “Erlebniswelt” for the above information on player statistics, the guestbook and the club newsletter.

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/06/soccer-the-first-world-war/feed/0Searching for the New Germanshttp://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/05/searching-for-the-new-germans/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/05/searching-for-the-new-germans/#commentsTue, 27 May 2014 07:00:09 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=2109A Visit to the Academy’s Reading Room

Why do we keep books like Muslime im säkularen Rechtsstaat (Muslims in Secular Rule of Law), Diaspora Identities, or z.B. 650 Jahre Rixdorf (E.g. 650 Years of Rixdorf) at the Jewish Museum? Answering this question is the task of the Academy Programs on Migration and Diversity. How to find these books, however, falls to the library.

Imagine that you want to learn about social structures, clubs, and immigrant biographies in Berlin, particularly in Kreuzberg, to which you yourself moved from Hesse two years ago. After visiting the museum one fine Sunday afternoon, you take a look at the new Academy, where, you heard, a friend of yours recently attended an event about the ‘new Germans.’ The Academy is closed on the weekend, but a museum host informs you that it has a library. You return on Monday and ask in the reading room about Turks in Kreuzberg. The librarian would love just to tell you, “second shelf on the left, all the way to the back – what you’re looking for is right there.” Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple.

We have, in fact, expanded the classification system (see this PDF-file, in German) in our open stacks on the topic of ‘Migration and Diversity.’ In contrast to how we classify Jewish history, we’ve chosen to forego regional and historical distinctions. Rather, we have tried to render different aspects of debates over the transformation from homogeneous nation states into immigration societies visible: from politics and law, religion, and minorities to education, racism, and discrimination. After all, along with the parallels between diaspora identities, there are also significant differences: while German-Jewish history goes back a good two thousand years in places such as Cologne, Frankfurt, Altona, and Berlin, Germany as a country of immigrants dates to a more recent time. In addition to this consideration, we wanted to put terms like citizenship and keywords like parallel society into an international perspective right from the start.

But back to you. You don’t follow the librarian’s advice to search for ‘Berlin’ in the online catalog. Instead you go straight to the shelf with the new classifications for ‘Migration and Diversity.’ There, you happen upon E.g. 650 Years of Rixdorf under the heading ‘Literature, Art, and Culture.’ You start planning your next weekend outing, but it’s almost 7 p.m. now and the librarian is urging your departure. In the meantime you’ve flipped through the pages of the catalog Berlin – Istanbul, glanced at the study Muslims in Berlin, and are just noticing the book Wir neuen Deutschen (We New Germans) among several other auto-/biographies – for which ‘German History’ would perhaps have been a more obvious category, but still all too easy to miss. On your way home through Oranienplatz, you remember the tents that were here until recently. Refugees, the right of residency, asylum. There must be something at the Jewish Museum about that too…

To finish, here’s a tip: Generation “Kosher Light”, p. 232 ff. You won’t find the book, by the way, under ‘Migration and Diversity’ but rather ‘The Present’, in the ‘Jewish History in Germany’ section. A Russian Jewish perspective on diversity in Kreuzberg.

In June of 2012 I had the opportunity to delve into the estate of Fred Stein. During the preparation for our then-upcoming exhibition “In an Instant,” I travelled to the little town of Stanfordville, NY to visit Peter Stein, the photographer’s son and archive administrator. For a week, I studied the voluminous and multi-faceted material stored in various rooms of the private residence. It was an unforgettable immersion into the life and work of Fred Stein.

Hundreds of negatives, kept in fireproof cabinets, make up the core of the collection. Their differing formats point to the two cameras Stein photographed with: coiled strips of Leica negatives and individually packaged 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches negatives in pergamin sheets from the Rolleiflex. The cameras themselves unfortunately didn’t survive. Among these negatives, you can see Stein’s first shots of Dresden shortly before he emigrated to Paris in 1933.

Binders full of contact sheets offer a good overview of Fred Stein’s œuvre. His pictures of Paris in the 1930s are set apart from those of New York in the 1940s and from the portraits he took throughout his life. Most of the captions in these binders were written by his wife Lilo and appear in German, French, and English, the languages of the three stages of the Steins’ life.

In addition, many original prints still exist, predominantly 8 x 10 inches in size, both on matte and glossy paper. Regrettably Fred Stein never signed his prints. You find his signature only on a few original mats. He also never assigned titles to his photographs. Most of the pictures can be distinguished, however, by the captions on the negatives and sometimes also a date and short working title on the back side of the prints.

Beyond the photographs themselves there is an extensive correspondence consisting of personal and business-related letters. There are many pieces of writing that reveal a photographer’s everyday problems: a number of reminders requesting payment for even the smallest fees offer insight into Stein’s financial situation. Innumerable demands to respect copyright suggest how frequently his photographs were published without an indication of authorship.

One letter that Fred Stein wrote in 1946 to friends and relatives elaborates on what befell him and his wife during their emigration and also describes the difficulties they had during the war. For instance, we hear about how Stein was interned as an “enemy foreigner” in various camps in France starting in 1939, about his successful escape by foot to the south of France and reunion there in 1941 with his wife and daughter. Personal documents like this letter as well as family photographs afford a moving look at the private life of Fred Stein, who only became a photographer once he was in exile.

For me, surveying his archive was an intense experience with lasting effects. I would like sincerely to thank Peter Stein and his wife Dawn Freer for inviting me into their home. Pieces of the puzzle that my previous research exposed came to fit together over my week in New York and motifs I’d already noticed were complemented by ‘new discoveries.’ This trip reinforced initial ideas for the exhibition: the concept as it was implemented, the way biography and work closely intermeshed. You still have a chance to see the show until 4 May in the Eric F. Ross gallery of the Jewish Museum Berlin.

Theresia Ziehe, Photography collection and curator for the exhibition “In an Instance”